work is making me stressed!

[tsuki_no_bara]

so you know how we're doing end of year reviews at work? in addition to those, we also have to do what are called performance spotlights, which you're supposed to initiate before a project and then finish after the project. we need three for the end of the year. i have to find three people to do like mini-reviews of my work in three different

Comments

[amw]

This treads very close to going past the anonymity i like to retain on LJ, but i have a fair bit of familiarity with the peer feedback concept of performance reviews, because it is exactly the product we built in my last job. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on it, because i often found myself in debates with both colleagues and HR professionals about why peer reviews were better/worse than manager reviews. Is your company doing it to "encourage a feedback culture"?

[amw]

they are! i think the point is to keep us engaged with our jobs and the workplace. their new thing is making you the captain of your career - there's graphics with people sailing sailboats and everything - which i guess is supposed to make you feel like you have control over your professional life. (i'm an admin. it's not like i can be promoted that far, not like tax associates can move up to manager/director/managing director/whatever. i swear there are like seven or eight levels in the tax hierarchy. there are only forty people in tax, and one of them's me.) theoretically you're supposed to approach your manager or team leader before an engagement, so you can discuss your goals and expectations for that particular project, and when it's over you meet again and get and give feedback as to how you did. but my job doesn't really work that way, which makes it hard to do the specific performance reviews. they're not really peer reviews for me, tho, since i don't exactly have peers (by which i assume other admins) in tax. also

[tsuki_no_bara]

that was me. i have no idea why it posted anonymous.

[amw]

Yes, this captain of your career thing is very much a new trend in workplace culture that is being pushed hard from Silicon Valley and has started working its way into other industries too

[tsuki_no_bara]

i think a lot of corporate culture favors the extrovert, and that's not me. i also don't have a grand passion for my job, or the place where i work. i mean, i'm an admin and i work in a tax and audit firm. i don't have a grand passion for taxes or money management, and i don't know anyone who has a life plan that includes "get a job as support staff". i want to go to work, chat with my coworkers (who i like! they're mostly a nice bunch of people), and go home. it's a job, y'know? i don't need to be fully engaged with the company or the company culture, and i don't think my work or workplace needs to be part of my "personal brand" in my off-hours. i also don't think everyone needs to be working at something they have a grand passion for. you shouldn't totally hate your job, but you also don't have to commit your entire being to it for it to be worth anything, or for you to be worth anything as an employee. you might be right about it being generational too, altho the people coming up with this stuff for my office are not